Existing methods for entertaining a listener (or viewer) with music or music videos (or other entertainment) have numerous limitations that result in a less than an ideal user experience.
A major limitation with broadcast media such as radio and television is that the user has no control over the channel stream. If the listener does not like the current composition, the listener's only option is to change to another station or channel. However, there are typically a limited number of alternate channels of music suitable for the user. In addition, to switch quickly to a suitable alternative channel requires the user to have found and pre-selected the alternate channels of interest. When the user does switch channels, the new channel will most likely be somewhere in the middle of a composition, advertisement or other audio presentation. Recently commercial-free radio is being offered via satellite radio (e.g., XM Radio) and some internet radio stations, but the music is not customized to each user. Another major limitation of broadcast is that there is no link between the broadcast stream and the user's music collection. If the listener does hear a song they would like to add to their music collection, they typically need to remember the artist, album and song so it can be located or acquired at some later time. Often, the information needed to acquire a song (artist, album, title, etc) is not available at broadcast time when the listener is interested in it.
A major limitation of purchased albums on media such as CD's, DAT, tapes, and DVD's is that the user must expend considerable effort to be able to identify what they want and then to locate the media at a vendor and then purchase it. In order to purchase a media, the listener must be able to identify the specific album desired by artist and album name. Each purchased media may include many compositions that the user does not want. Sometimes the listener may purchase the wrong album by mistake. Once purchased, the listener must provide physical storage for the media and then later locate and insert the media to playback the compositions. To playback a particular song, the user must remember the particular media (e.g., CD) the song is located on and then be able to find that specific media among perhaps 100's of similar looking media. The user must also coordinate and physically transport the media between the user's various locations and user-devices (e.g. home, car, portable player, etc). Often, a desired album's media may not be at the desired user's location. In addition, media players hold only a limited of number of media so the user is limited to a playback stream from a limited number of albums at any one time. For certain locations, such as in an automobile, the locating, handing and inserting the media may be a safety distraction. The order of playback is limited to the composition order on the media, the random ordering of the media compositions and/or perhaps a playlist the user manually defines. The media is subject to scratching or other physical damage, requiring the user to create backup copies or purchase replacement copies. The physical media may have a physical lifetime which is much shorter then the users. In addition, due to the rapid rate of technological change, vendor support for a given media format may be less than the user's lifetime.
An emerging technology is the storage and management of the user's music collection on the user's personal computer (PC). With compression technology (such as MP3 or WMA formats), approximately 2500 (near CD quality) songs can be stored per 10 Gbyte of hard disc capacity. Since PC's with 30 to 100+ Gbyte discs are now commonly available, now or in the near future, PC's will have sufficient capacity to hold a user's full music collection in compressed format. The user's collection is typically managed on the PC by interactive windows driven software, which the user must install and learn to use. The user must expend a significant effort to build their collection of compositions. The user may expend significant effort to convert their previously purchased media (such as CD's) into suitable compressed files on the PC hard drive. Even using high read/write rate drives, such a conversion could take 3 to 10 minutes per CD and 5 to 16 hours for a collection of 100 CD's. The quality of the compressed file is determined by the user's ability to operate the compression software and select the appropriate compression settings for each composition.
An emerging way of building a music collection on the user's PC is the purchase and down load of songs in a suitable compressed format across the internet. The major providers of downloadable songs include PressPlay, AOL MusicNet, FullAudio MusicNow, and MusicMatch. Users use the PC to locate, purchase and download new songs over the internet. A major limitation of this approach is that the user must be able to identify the artist, album and song by name. Disadvantages include that the user must manually locate each song within the catalog of songs in the provider's database, by typically either reading through an alphabetical list of songs by musical category (genre), artist, album; or alternatively by performing a search for each song via a search tool. They may have to navigate a separate set of web pages to locate and download the composition. In some cases, a web page may provide a short sample of a song which may be heard before purchasing and downloading the full song. The user may have to wait while the download is occurring, in order to verify it downloaded correctly. An additional disadvantage is that the additional cost of the PC may exceed the cost of the user-devices. In addition, the user must learn to use the PC and its software. The user must manage the downloaded composition once it's been downloaded. The user may have to manually create playlists and later relocate the user created playlists by the playlist name.
Some users have built a portion of their collection via music piracy and file sharing software, often using peer-to-peer networks across the internet. The user faces ethical and legal issues. The user faces additional security and privacy issues associated with the peer-to-peer networks and the associated software such as viruses, worms, spyware, and stealth software. In addition, the quality of each music file is unknown and not guaranteed, since there are multiple good, marginal, bad and bogus versions of each song out on the network. The user must expend effort to locate the artist, album and song. Then, after waiting for the download to complete, the user must determine if the quality of the downloaded song is acceptable, and begin the process again if the quality is insufficient. The quality of the pirated song may be well below the quality of the original version.
Once the collection is built, the user must manage their collection of songs on the PC storage device. Using windows driven software on the PC, the user must manually select among the songs in their collection to create one or more playlists. In addition, the user must periodically back-up their collection on the PC to protect against loss due to drive failure, fire, damage or theft. For large collections, this is so inconvenient and time consuming; it is often not done frequently enough or not done at all, placing at risk of loss all of the user's efforts in building their collection. There are many competing file formats (MP3, WMA, AAC, etc), which only operate with certain vendor's hardware and/or software. The formats are constantly evolving and may have a limited vendor support lifetime. The user's collection in a particular format may no longer be supported at some point in time, requiring considerable user effort to convert the collection into another supported format, if a conversion is even possible.
Several new types of music players, including portable players, have emerged that are capable of handling compressed storage formats. The user's collection and playlists for these devices are typically managed via interactive windows software on the user's PC. For players with limited storage capacity (e.g., SonicBlue Rio MP3 player), PC software is used to select a limited portion of the user's collection, which is then sent to the player's memory over a cable or loaded onto memory media or a memory device which the user can insert into the portable player. Some recent players (such as Apple's iPod, Creative's Nomad Jukebox Zen, or PhatNoise's PhatBox) have large enough hard disc storage (10 to 30 Gbyte) to hold a collection of up to 2000 to 8000 songs. Some players (e.g., the Apple iPod) auto-synchronize with the PC by plugging into a high rate interface cable. The PhatBox player, intended for installation in automobiles has a removable hard disk cartridge that attaches to a PC cradle (USB 2.0 cable) for content management. The user's collection and the creation of user playlists are managed on the PC via interactive windows based software.
Another emerging technology is user customized radio via streaming across the internet, such as Yahoo LaunchCast. An automatically generated sequence of songs, custom selected based on the user's profile, is generated remotely at the service providers server. The stream is forwarded to the user across the internet to a player application located on the user's PC. Each user creates a unique profile using an interactive windows application on the PC in-order to select music categories and artists the user likes. The user also may provide additional profile feedback, while a composition is playing or by accessing the user's library, to rate each song, album and artist on a rating scale. A major disadvantage of LaunchCast is that there is no link between the user's radio profile information and the user's music collection [i.e., the user's usage-rights (e.g., listening-rights) to particular compositions]. Because there is no link with the user's usage-rights, the LaunchCast user does not have the ability to go “backward” or to repeat a song or cause a particular song to play. If the user wishes to add a composition that is playing to their collection, they are only provided with a link to a web page where the CD may be purchased. A disadvantage of streaming is the skipping or jumps that occur if the continuous virtual bandwidth is interrupted by other network traffic. Another disadvantage of streaming is its limited tolerance to insufficient network latency, which can result in delays in the radio program, especially when the user decides to “forward” or “skip” over the currently playing song.
Other interactive internet based streaming services allow the user to create a custom playlist or multiple playlists of favorites, by selecting each song to include from a catalog of compositions provided by the service. A major limitation is that the user must be familiar enough with the composition to be able to identify the artist, album and song by name. In addition, the user must expend considerable effort to manually locate each song within the catalog of songs in the provider's database or the user's library, by typically either reading through an alphabetical list of songs by genre, artist, album or performing a search for each song by using a search tool. The user must continually and manually update all this as their musical tastes change over time. To generate a stream of songs, the user may then have to choose a group or order of particular songs to form a user's custom playlist. Another limitation is the user does not own the music collection and does not own usage-rights to the music. In addition, it is not integrated to other usage-rights the user already has purchased.
In some internet services, the user may indicate the relative likeablity of each of the songs in their custom playlist. Typically, the user manually rates each composition based on a scale, such as 1 to 100. Which requires the user to manage in their mind the relative rankings of songs by rating number so one song has a higher number relative to another. In addition, the user must manually change their ratings and their playlists as their taste for songs changes over time. This typically requires a significant amount of visual interaction from the user, often with a PC windows based display, which is not suitable while driving an automobile or for many other activities.
The Apple iTunes system is currently one of the most popular methods for purchasing music on-line. When a user makes an on-line purchase, the usage-rights and composition is typically downloaded and then stored locally on the hard disk of a user's personal computer (PC). With Apple iTunes, a user may only be allowed to download the composition once (or a limited number of times) per purchase. A user may lose their purchased usage-rights if this local user-device (typically a personal computer) is damaged, destroyed, lost, stolen, etc. If lost, the iTunes song must be purchased a second time before it can be downloaded again.
To protect their iTunes collection from loss, users are responsible for backing up their collection of compositions by copying them from the personal computer to an external storage device or media. Without a backup copy, any damage or loss of the personal computer's hard disk will result in an unrecoverable loss of the user's collection and the user would be required to repurchase and rebuild their collection again from scratch. Many users do not perform regular backups because of the time and effort involved. Even when backups are done, users often keep their backup copies in close proximity to their computer hard drive, which may not protect against loss or damage from a fire or theft.
With Apple iTunes, a purchased song may be authorized for use on only 5 user-devices (of an authorized type) at a time. The user is required to perform a complicated procedure to transfer a song and obtain authorization to use the song on each new user-device. In order to authorize the use of a song on a new user-device, the user may be required to enter the Apple-ID and password used to purchase the song. When the 5 user-device limit is reached, the user is also required to manually de-authorize a song on one user-device so it can be authorized on another user-device. The user must also remember to de-authorize their computers and user-devices whenever they are sold, given away or are serviced.
Transfers of iTunes usage-rights to other user-devices (such as a portable player) are typically accomplished by a cable or local area wireless connection between the PC and the second device. This typically requires the other user-devices to be brought near the PC or local media server where the user's usage-rights are stored. In addition, the user must plan and coordinate bringing the devices together whenever a transfer of usage-rights is desired. Such transfers are particularly difficult when the user-devices are at different physical locations (such as home, work, automobile, etc.) or are not easily portable.
Overall, an iTunes user must expend significant time and effort to acquire, download, backup, and transfer songs between their user-devices and to authorize/de-authorize their collection of songs at each user-device.
Today, a given user-device is typically compatible with only one or a limited number of the many different file formats, compression-decompression algorithms and content-protection methods. Vendors such as Microsoft, RealNetworks and Apple may use proprietary or industry standard (MP3, MPEG-4) approaches. These are often not interoperable. Digital content packaged for one vendor's user-devices (e.g., Apple) may not be playable on another vendor's user-devices (e.g., Microsoft Windows Media). In addition, new, different and improved formats, compression-decompression algorithms and content-protection methods are expected to be introduced in the future.
Today, the content-protection methods are typically based on proprietary digital rights management (DRM) approaches that are unique to each vendor's user-devices. Examples of DRM solutions include InterTrust (Rights System), RealNetworks (Media Commerce Suite), Windows Media (Rights Manager) and Widevine Cyper.
When the user purchases digital content (e.g., a composition) today, it may only play on the user-devices from a single vendor. For example, if a user purchases a song from the Apple iTunes Music Store, it can only be played using an iTunes jukebox (Apple software) on the user's PC or using an Apple hardware device such as an Apple iPod portable player.
Today, the large number of incompatible choices confuses consumers and reduces sales because consumers are uncertain about what to buy and are afraid of buying soon-to-be obsolete products. Consumers recognize that many different media products that are introduced in the marketplace quickly die (for example, Beta VCR tapes). Consumers are also concerned that new technology will be introduced in the near future that will make their purchased user-devices and composition formats obsolete (for example, vinyl LP records). Today, many consumers may decide to delay purchases of user-devices and their corresponding compatible digital-content (e.g., digital-works) until a technology approach becomes the established industry standard.
More generally, the above discussion may also apply to any type of digital-work including music, music videos, multi-media, artwork, pictures, audio, sound, short films, movies, video clips, television programs, audio versions of books, talks, speeches, voice content, lectures, software, software plug-ins and any other type of digital-work. In some cases, the media formats will differ (DVD's or other formats instead of CD's), but the limitations discussed are generally applicable.